David Williams House (1766)

Built by David Williams, a ship builder, in 1766-1767 (and later expanded), the house at 27 West Avenue in Essex was acquired by Abel Pratt in 1798. According to the 1884 History of Middlesex County,

The manufacture of combs in this country was first begun by Phineas Pratt and his son Abel, about the close of the last century. They were the first inventors of machinery for cutting the teeth upon combs, by which they could be produced so as to compete with English manufacturers. The shop in which they worked stood a few yards west of the site of Pratt’s blacksmith shop, and the first machinery was driven by wind power. Abel Pratt carried on the business during the first years of this century [the nineteenth].

In the later nineteenth century, it was owned by members of the Pratt family connected to the nearby Pratt Smithy, established in 1678 and handed down through ten generations.